I think “misleading” seems also marginally better for these kinds of things. It still has some of the “well, I notice a correlation in your errors” dimension, but without being as judgmental about the details.
Outside of LW, I think “dishonest” often has a conscious/intentional/deliberate/premediated connotation.
FWIW, I don’t really believe this. I’ve been following how people use terms like “dishonest” in public very closely since 2022, and mostly people use it when people seem to say contradictory things, and the eternal back and forth between “these errors sure seem correlated and this person is saying contradictory things to different people” and “are you saying this person sat down and with full conscious awareness decided to lie to people?” seems to be a universal component of talking about honesty.
Other people don’t really have more agreement on the definitions of “dishonesty” or “lying”, and I think that reflects an underlying complexity in the territory. There are different levels of self-awareness, and in the end it’s also not really clear how much it matters if someone has a homunculus in their brain that does notice how they are saying different things to different people, vs. they are just doing it on instinct.
in the end it’s also not really clear how much it matters if someone has a homunculus in their brain that does notice how they are saying different things to different people, vs. they are just doing it on instinct.
I think from a purely “assess the consequences/predict the behavior” perspective this makes sense. I do think that many people view it as more “wrong” to do the intentional homunculus thing and would be more upset & feel more attacked if someone accused them of this.
Put differently, I think “Alice, you were misleading there” will reliably evoke a different response from Alice compared to “Alice, you were dishonest.” To get more fine-grained:
“Alice, I think you were misleading”– low aggro//most kind
“Alice, I think you [deliberately] lied to me– high aggro//least kind
“Alice, I think you were [deliberately? accidentally?] dishonest”– ambiguous. Could be easily interpreted as the high aggro//least kind version.
I think “misleading” seems also marginally better for these kinds of things. It still has some of the “well, I notice a correlation in your errors” dimension, but without being as judgmental about the details.
FWIW, I don’t really believe this. I’ve been following how people use terms like “dishonest” in public very closely since 2022, and mostly people use it when people seem to say contradictory things, and the eternal back and forth between “these errors sure seem correlated and this person is saying contradictory things to different people” and “are you saying this person sat down and with full conscious awareness decided to lie to people?” seems to be a universal component of talking about honesty.
Other people don’t really have more agreement on the definitions of “dishonesty” or “lying”, and I think that reflects an underlying complexity in the territory. There are different levels of self-awareness, and in the end it’s also not really clear how much it matters if someone has a homunculus in their brain that does notice how they are saying different things to different people, vs. they are just doing it on instinct.
I think from a purely “assess the consequences/predict the behavior” perspective this makes sense. I do think that many people view it as more “wrong” to do the intentional homunculus thing and would be more upset & feel more attacked if someone accused them of this.
Put differently, I think “Alice, you were misleading there” will reliably evoke a different response from Alice compared to “Alice, you were dishonest.” To get more fine-grained:
“Alice, I think you were misleading”– low aggro//most kind
“Alice, I think you [deliberately] lied to me– high aggro//least kind
“Alice, I think you were [deliberately? accidentally?] dishonest”– ambiguous. Could be easily interpreted as the high aggro//least kind version.